Anything
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: One-shot set in an alternate-universe where Lord Voldemort took that 'I'll do anything' as a magically binding offer too tempting to pass over... Rated 'M' (to be on the safe side). Warning! Unpleasant things implied in places.


Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following is a one-shot which dabbles in the waters of a Lily whose life goes on (but has taken a darker turn) following the events of Hallowe'en 1981. It is alternate universe.

* * *

'_I'll do anything!_'

Those were the fateful words uttered seven months ago by a woman in desperation trying to save the son she loved. They haunted Lily Potter in every moment of her waking hours, and the more so in her dreams when her current 'lodger' who was her lord and master especially intruded upon her.

That Hallowe'en night Voldemort had cocked his head on one side, apparently considering, and then said in that clear cold voice: 'I accept your absolute and unconditional offer.'

And then he'd put a dark mark upon her – not on her arm, as with regular Death Eaters of his inner circle, but on her chest. And he'd whisked her and Harry away to some murky lair, where he'd proceeded to avail himself of her coldly and methodically, accompanied by a good deal of spellwork, in other fashions for the next few days.

And he'd extracted everything from Lily that she knew or thought that she knew about the Longbottoms.

And then he'd gone away and attacked the Longbottoms, with the assistance of the information that Lily had yielded to him and killed Frank and Alice, but something had gone wrong with Voldemort's attack upon Neville, and Voldemort had been hit by a rebounding killing curse.

As far as the rest of the magical world was concerned, Voldemort was dead, and Neville Longbottom was known as 'The-Boy-who-Lived'.

As far as Lily was concerned, Voldemort (as a bodiless spirit) had homed in on her, following the moment of his physical 'death' and taken up residence inside her head.

Lily had effectively sold her soul to a monster, with those fateful words. Oh yes, she had free will in theory to defy him, but Harry was involved in the vow – whom Voldemort hadn't so far so much as lifted a finger against himself that night. If _Lily_ violated the promise she'd made, she was afraid that magic would exact a price on her son and firstborn child.

Voldemort had rapidly gathered that in the wake of his attack on the Longbottoms – and his apparent 'defeat' – whilst he was 'in transition' to taking up residence in and making effective contact with Lily, the Death Eaters had gone into a panic and started defecting to the Ministry or engaging in reckless attacks which got them caught. The war had been going badly for Voldemort ever since the demise of the last giants in the late seventies, and the Ministry allowing aurors to use the Unforgiveable Curses against those they suspected of being his followers hadn't helped much either. He'd been reduced to fighting essentially a terrorist campaign, protected only by secrecy, and with his followers basically dependent upon his leadership to maintain coherency and morale; and following Hallowe'en, 1981, he'd kept Lily in seclusion from the Death Eaters, with no indication that she was now part of 'his team'. By the time that Lily might be able to persuade any Death Eaters that she was in touch with their master (and on their side), it would have been far too late for Voldemort to use Lily as a mouthpiece and his hands to reassert sufficiently effective control to stave off the inevitable 'triumph' of the Order of the Phoenix and Ministry – so he'd instead simply instructed Lily to remove herself in the direction of a remote and obscure part of Albania with which he was familiar, where he intended to regroup and rebuild.

Since Voldemort's current entourage in terms of capable witches and wizards consisted solely of Lily Potter, the regrouping consisted basically of his requiring her to keep herself disguised and paying regular attention to reports of what was happening in magical Britain. Voldemort's idea of rebuilding – well for now it consisted of giving Lily a crash-course in dark magic, and in her experimenting and making modifications to the 'dark mark' which she bore – currently the only active one in the world.

Oh, yes, and he required her to take regular care of her son, Harry, whom he presumably viewed as a possible future recruit, and of herself, as Lily _was_ getting increasingly large with the half-sibling of Harry whom Voldemort had fathered on her during those few days in November when he'd 'availed himself of her'.

Lily hadn't understood, until Voldemort had explained it to her, _why_ he wanted a child, least of all by a muggle-born witch.

"Immediate blood-relatives, whether living or dead, are useful in some forms of magic." he'd said in a cold tone which had made her shiver at the time.

The thought made her shiver _still_. She hadn't _wanted_ the Dark Lord to get a child upon her, but it was still going to be _her_ baby, and a half-brother or sister to Harry. She wouldn't want it being casually sacrificed as a component to some dark ritual just to advance the Dark Lord's own agenda.

Lily's trouble was that there had been that foolish, impulsive 'anything'. That moment of preparation to sacrifice anything _but_ Harry. It might have been why the Dark Lord had spared both Lily _and_ Harry, but Lily had limited, considerably, her own future bargaining ability with it.

A couple of months past the date of the Dark Lord's disastrous raid on the Longbottoms, once it was clear that Lily _was_ pregnant, the Dark Lord had insisted she make _one_ trip back to England, to retrieve some things he wanted. She'd first approached a hut of some kind, on his instructions, and then drunk a potion she'd prepared on his instructions and sort of 'phased out' whilst the Dark Lord took control of her body and actions, to deal with the traps he'd set about the place and to retrieve an item he considered a family heirloom. It was a ring of some kind, which he insisted Lily wear all the time. It gave her the creeps, and it allowed Voldemort to actually talk to her in her thoughts outside of her dreams, which had surprised _him_.

He'd also got her to visit a cave to retrieve some sort of locket, immediately after the call on the semi-ruined hovel, only that had been less successful since it turned out that Regulus Black, Sirius' brother, had got there first and pinched the locket, leaving a duplicate behind containing a rude note. That had absolutely _enraged_ Voldemort, and he'd had Lily, once she was safely back in Albania, cook up a _very_ dark piece of magic, and direct it at Walburga Black, Regulus' mother. Apparently it had taken Walburga twelve hours, during which she was screaming almost all the time, to perish.

Lily, to her shame, had actually _enjoyed_ cooking that up at Voldemort's direction, given all the horror stories Sirius had told in Gryffindor Tower about Walburga.

Sirius was currently in Azkaban, of course. There'd been confusion due to the Potters' ill-starred plan over their secret keeper – apparently everyone else had believed Sirius _had_ been the secret keeper and that he had sold James, Lily, and Harry out. The fact that Sirius had in some mad fit hunted down and highly publically blown up the actual secret keeper, Peter Pettigrew, hadn't exactly helped his position either. Nor that Voldemort had had Lily covertly close and reopen under a different name the Potter account on the morning of November the first by high security mail-owl to Gringotts. Only Lily, James, or Sirius (the named executor of the Potter wills) could have done that, and thanks to Voldemort the rest of the world thought that James and Lily were both dead – Lily killed in such a fashion along with her son that their bodies had been all but utterly annihilated. Everyone else thought that having betrayed the Potters, Sirius must have then proceeded to steal their gold.

Sirius was in Azkaban, and apparently the only living souls other than Sirius himself who knew that he was innocent of at least _some_ of the crimes of which he'd been accused (Sirius might not have ever worked for Voldemort, and maybe Peter had 'deserved it', but there _were_ all those dead muggles in the final battle between him and Peter Pettigrew, after all) were Lily and Voldemort. And Voldemort considered that right now it was _not_ a priority to get Sirius out of Azkaban. Oh, in the middle of November, during their first week in hiding at what had eventually become their current permanent base for operations in Albania, he'd had Lily write a letter and date it at the 28th October, 1981, in which she mentioned the plan to change secret keepers. Sirius Black had been sent to Azkaban, after all, without a trial by Bagnold and Crouch, with Dumbledore at the least not objecting. At some point in the future it might be useful to Voldemort's plans to destabilise the magical government in Britain by revealing some of the major players had sent a wizard of high birth to jail for crimes of which he was innocent, without even bothering to give him a trial.

For now, though, Voldemort was having Lily 'sit' on the letter, as – aside from his not judging the moment right to launch it for maximum impact – there were spells which could ascertain roughly when a document had been written. Such spells grew less accurate with the passage of time since the writing of a target document – right now it would be possible to determine that the letter had in fact been written in November 1981, but in several years' time the letter would register as having been written at some time in October or November of 1981, which would fit the date on it, and help preserve the illusion it had been written whilst Lily was, as far as the rest of the wizarding world was concerned, 'still alive'. Okay, there'd still be some mystery around the missing Potter money, which Lily had no idea how Voldemort would try to resolve, but Voldemort had readied a major weapon which could be used at some point in the future to try and clear Sirius Black and shake the foundations of the politically mighty.

Recently Voldemort had had Lily perform some piece of borderline dark magic connected to the ring which she wore, and a map of Britain. Apparently he'd been expecting some result from it other than what it produced, because it seemed to both make him happy and to _puzzle_ him to some extent.

He seemed to think it might have been that they had been overly hasty in their acting against Walburga. Somehow the magic seemed to tell him that the locket from the cave _hadn't_ been destroyed, but was sitting around somewhere still – Voldemort seemed to think the Blacks might have sent Regulus to steal it and to leave a note _pretending_ it would be destroyed, so that they could try and use the locket as leverage at some point in the future.

Lily didn't consider that they had been too fast to act against Walburga at all. It was, aside from a few moments when Voldemort _wasn't_ bothering her and she forgot herself enough to enjoy the 'glow' of pregnancy or a moment with Harry, one of the few things she'd tremendously enjoyed and felt good about since Hallowe'en.

She was worried about what all the dark magic was doing to her, though.

Her _wand_ was starting to look and feel distinctly different every time she took it out to perform a piece of magic. And if this was happening to her wand, then what did that say about _her_?

* * *

Author's Notes: (Subject to update)

The Voldemort in this alternate universe convinced himself that there was enough power and potential advantage to be gained from Lily's offer of 'anything' that he allowed himself to be swayed into deciding that Neville Longbottom was the child of prophecy after all. He doesn't care much about any promises he made to Severus Snape; he offered to spare just Lily, after all, and she made a counter-offer offering herself entirely, body, mind, and spirit to Voldemort, in exchange for Harry's continued existence. To Voldemort's mind, that makes Lily entirely his own possession, and not something which he intends to share with anyone else.

Voldemort probably offered to spare Frank and/or Alice Longbottom in this universe because they were pure-bloods from a very old family and foes he respected (or something like that) but he got impatient with their prevarications, and Neville basically ended up as The-Boy-Who-Lived as canon Harry does due to parental sacrifice/love.

Voldemort's occupation of Lily in this universe, post his raid on the Longbottoms, is less 'direct' than his occupation of Quirinus Quirrell during the 1991-1992 school year of canon. Given that Quirrell isn't featured wearing a turban in canon during Harry's meeting with him at the Leaky Cauldron during July 1991 (in the books), it's apparently possible for Voldemort to interact with a living being without growing a face on the back of their head, and it seems to me to be implied that in any case direct possession of the face-growing variety is fatal in the long term for the one being possessed – and Voldemort in this alternate universe has _plans_ for Lily that require him keeping her alive and intact for as long as possible. Plus he already has leverage over Lily (her promise of 'anything') to ensure she does what he wants that he apparently doesn't have with canon Quirrell (who is apparently at times willing to object to going along with his plans).

Since the 'resurrection stone' allows communication with the dead, I figured it could be appropriate for Lily, whilst it's in her possession, to be enabled to take instructions from Voldemort directly whilst in a waking state (otherwise it's trances or dreams only). Voldemort assumes for now it does this because it's one of his horcruxes. Voldemort used Lily to retrieve the ring (and attempted to use her to retrieve the locket - I assume he'd have some way of his own to bypass the potion) because they're both heirlooms of 'his family' and he wants them around to impress (and he possibly requires their presence for use in magic he's planning for the future). Wearing the ring horcrux hasn't had the deleterious effect on Lily in this story that it had on Albus Dumbledore in canon, either because Voldemort at least temporarily disarmed his 'you wear this and you die' curse or _because_ he's riding around inside her head his presence ensures that the ring doesn't affect her. (It wouldn't make sense for his wearing the ring himself to potentially kill him, after all, and it's possible that in the name of showing off his lineage he'd want to leave himself the opportunity to wear the ring at times...)

This story is a one-shot. I would like to mention that 'dialNforNinja' recently posted a story along similar lines, called 'Well Begun is?', which he/she notes (at least in July 2013) that he/she is taking suggestions for or offers of continuation.

Update (8th July 2013):

To respond to one early reviewer, Severus Snape in this alternate universe fares badly. Busy with his own secret schemes following the attack on Godric's Hollow, Voldemort lets even his inner circle of Death Eaters believe he killed _all_ the Potters, leaving Severus convinced that Lily is dead. News of Lily's death is apparently devastating to canon Severus according to 'The Prince's Tale' chapter of book 7, and canon Albus Dumbledore can hold out to him the carrot of 'help me save her son' - Albus Dumbledore in this universe can't even do that, Harry being apparently deceased too. Severus Snape in this universe manages to hold things together, out of sheer spite and hatred for Voldemort, until the end of the wizarding war with Voldemort's attack on the Longbottoms, and then goes to pieces, descending into tragic self-destructive behaviour. He likely either kills himself or resorts to 'drinking his troubles away'.


End file.
